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I waited 45 years for Everton moment - Liverpool supporters feeling glum should get some perspective
The Everton version of the classic Guy Mitchell ditty was being played loud and proud on the Goodison Park PA system after the final whistle.
Earlier on, Liverpool fans in the away section of the Bullens Road Stand had mocked Evertonians with the chant of: “You’ve not won a trophy since 1995,” but they were drowned out in the end by the home supporters taunted their title-chasing visitors with: “You lost the league at Goodison Park.” Given that Jurgen Klopp once described the Merseyside Derby as being “like a World Cup final” for Everton – just a few weeks after he’d been fined for running into the centre circle of the pitch to celebrate a stoppage time winner in the fixture – perhaps Blues fans could follow the neighbours’ example from 1960s title triumphs by fashioning a homemade piece of silverware to mark this occasion?
Along with their long-established local support, Liverpool’s decades of success have brought them a huge global fanbase of patrons eager to share in the reflected glory of latching on to a dominant football team. But even though only the Reds had won more League Championships than Everton when the title last came to Goodison Park in 1987, the Premier League era has generally been a trail of tears for the Blues, especially these traumatic last couple of years.
A whole generation of Evertonians have been weaned on an attritional diet, with relegation battles and now points deductions. But as the Blues prepare for their final season at Goodison Park and their historic move to a new stadium, legions of Merseysiders still place their allegiance to the senior club in the city with over 30,000 now on the season ticket waiting list.
Here’s a revelation that might shock you. I’ve been coming to Goodison Park for over 34 years and have covered both clubs professionally for almost two decades but this is the FIRST time I ever saw Everton beat Liverpool… honestly.
I’ve been to hundreds of matches either side of Stanley Park, I’ve seen Everton beat Liverpool in the women’s derby, I’ve seen Everton’s reserve and youth teams beat their Liverpool counterparts - but not in the fixture that has been played some 244 times.
For a time, the 1990s were something of a golden era for the Blues’ ‘Dogs of War’ against the Reds’ ‘Spice Boys’ but while I was in the stands on those final day escapes against Wimbledon and Coventry City, the only derby ‘action’ I witnessed up close was a goalless pre-season stalemate in the Sir John Moores Centenary Tournament in 1996. During my three years at university I had a season ticket in the Gwladys Street but that hat-trick of games included another brace of goalless draws (the second when Everton were denied a last-second winner off Don Hutchison’s backside with Graham Poll finally admitting years later he was wrong to disallow it) and then the 3-2 loss when Liverpool scored from miles out when the name ‘McAllister’ was associated with late goals rather than a midfielder who just went around kicking Blues players.
Cutting my teeth in professional journalism, I was working for the Ellesmere Port Pioneer covering Vauxhall Motors FC when Lee Carsley was the hero in 2004 and then two years later I was on honeymoon when I rushed my new – Liverpool-supporting – bride (like many in Merseyside, ours is a ‘mixed marriage’), to an internet café in Santa Barbara, California, to see that Everton had triumphed 3-0. Over five thousand miles away from Andrew Johnson’s exploits, I was hardly going to rub it in with my nearest and dearest, while as I said on Twitter ahead of this latest derby, the beautifully-penned piece by Sam Carroll about our friend and late colleague Dan Kay taught us that you can passionately support one club in this city while also respecting both.
The vagaries of the rota saw me confined to the office for both the 2009 (unlike many, I at least saw Dan Gosling score his extra time winner on television) and 2010 (that felt rather different as Roy Hodgson’s side were so bad) successes for the Blues and like most, I wasn’t inside Anfield for the 2021 behind closed doors victory due to coronavirus restrictions with even press numbers limited.
In the meantime, along with thousands of others, I had to endure Mark Clattenburg’s 2007 debacle, several thrashings and various other cruel and bizarrely novel ways of Everton losing to Liverpool.
So there you have it. The first Everton Derby win I’ve ever witnessed – in my 45th year – so any Kopites, either young or old, feeling glum today after what has been a tough few weeks by their stellar standards should put their disappointments into perspective (given how superstitious people are about football, at least nobody can blame me for being the ‘Jonah’ now).
